Quantifying Pain Is A Painful Business

One of the phrases I find most sickening
is 'I only want to help the most hurting'.
The phrase sickens me whether the pain to be relieved,
or left be, is in animals or in humans.

Who would genuinely grade other people's pain
in order to say mostly to themselves, nobody else,
'Person or animal X or Y is not in enough agony
for me to want to relieve them of their pain.'?

And yet that is what is meant by declarations
of helping the only most hurt must mean.
That is if the idea means anything.....

And if the phrase is practically meaningless
to the person saying it, then that is even worse.